The Huckabee Factor

Mike
Huckabee
walked into the lobby of the Des Moines Marriott at 5:30 a.m. on Dec. 3, deposited
an armful of dirty laundry at the desk and checked to make sure he was
being credited with Marriott Rewards points toward his next stay. Then,
accompanied by his wife, Janet, his daughter, Sarah, and his press secretary,
Alice Stewart — who doubles as his Boston Marathon trainer — he
walked into the dark, freezing morning, climbed into a waiting S.U.V. and
headed for Central College in Pella, Iowa.

Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, was in a buoyant mood on three
hours of sleep. The night before, his commercial flight suffered a long Chicago
holdover on the way from Boston, but he had reason to hope that his
days at the mercy of the airlines might be numbered. A Des Moines Register
opinion poll had just shown Huckabee passing Mitt Romney to take
the lead in the run-up to the Jan. 3 caucus. His picture, he already knew,
was on the front page of that morning’s USA Today. Now he was headed
to
Central College, to appear, surrounded by enthusiastic students, on ‘‘The
Early Show’’ on CBS . This kind of momentum, he hoped, would finally
produce enough cash to allow him to charter his own plane.

The governor was especially happy that morning about an impending
endorsement he expected (and received the following day) from Tim
LaHaye, the author of the apocalyptic ‘‘Left Behind’’ series
of novels.
‘‘Left Behind’’ is wildly popular among evangelicals,
who have bought
more than 65 million copies, making LaHaye a very rich man and one of
the few writers who is also a major philanthropist. Recently he donated a
hockey rink to Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, although some members
of the faculty there deride ‘‘Left Behind’’ as science
fiction. Huckabee, an
ordained Southern Baptist minister, has no such reservations. He considers
the ‘‘Left Behind’’ books, in which the world comes
to a violent end as Jesus
triumphs over Satan, a ‘‘compelling story written for nontheologians.’’

Huckabee’s affability and populist economic and social views have sometimes
been misinterpreted as a moderate brand of evangelical Christianity. In
fact, as he wrote in his book ‘‘Character Makes a Difference,’’ he
considers liberalism
to be a cancer on Christianity. Huckabee is an admirer of the late Jerry
Falwell (whose son, Jerry Jr., recently endorsed his candidacy) and subscribes
wholeheartedly to the principles of the Moral Majority. He also affirms the
Baptist Faith and Message statement: ‘‘The Holy Bible . . . has
truth, without
any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true
and
trustworthy.’’

On the road to Pella, Huckabee talked about the enthusiasm he now
encounters everywhere he goes. For example, he said, his driver in California
not only declined payment but also wrote the governor a $50 personal check
right on the spot. It was, I thought, a dangerous anecdote to tell within earshot
of a professional driver traveling along an icy highway at high speed, but
Huckabee was feeling invulnerable, and the driver, I later realized, was already
on the governor’s team. Huckabee normally starts his mornings by running
6 to 10 miles and reading a chapter from the Book of Proverbs. Today he was
too pressed to do either, but he planned to catch up later. Anyway, he knew
much of the day’s assignment, Chapter 3, by heart. ‘‘Trust
in the Lord,’’ he
quoted, ‘‘and lean not upon thine own understanding.’’ Not
a bad motto for
a campaign that is still too broke to do any independent polling.

Chapter 3 also contains the admonition to ‘‘keep sound wisdom and
discretion.’’ Huckabee is, indeed, a discreet fellow, but he has
no trouble
making his feelings known. He mentioned how much he respected his
fellow candidates John McCain and Rudolph W. Giuliani. The name of
his principal rival in Iowa, Mitt Romney, went unmentioned. Romney,
a Mormon, had promised that he would be addressing the subject of his
religion a few days later. I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as the
only Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered
Mormonism a cult or a religion. ‘‘I think it’s a religion,’’ he
said. ‘‘I really
don’t know much about it.’’

I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised
me with a question of his own: ‘‘Don’t Mormons,’’ he
asked in an
innocent voice, ‘‘believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?’’

In this unpredictable primary season, Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa
— and beyond — is perhaps the greatest surprise. Iowa was supposed
to
be a pushover for Mitt Romney. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor,
began working the state more than a year ago. He commands an
army of trained professionals and a vast ad budget. Mitt Romney’s message
flows like Muzak out of every radio and TV in the state. All this effort has
reportedly cost Romney more than $7 million. Huckabee, by contrast, has
spent less than $400,000 in Iowa. His paid staff in the state is not much bigger
than a softball team. Televised Huckabee ads have been harder to catch
than ‘‘I Love Lucy’’ reruns.

Even more amazing, when the Register poll came out Dec. 2, Huckabee
hadn’t been in the state for three weeks. In campaign time, that’s
approximately three centuries. But absence made hearts grow only fonder.
Not only was Huckabee leading in Iowa, he was also five points ahead
of Romney, 29 percent to 24 percent, and double digits away from the
rest of the field.

The movement was catching hold beyond Iowa too. On Dec. 5, a Rasmussen
daily tracking poll showed Huckabee leading the Republican field
nationally, ahead of Giuliani by three points, 20 percent to 17 percent. This
represented an eight-point jump for Huckabee in only a week. Other polls
still had Giuliani in the lead, but the Real Clear Politics Web site, which
averages national surveys, showed Huckabee in a virtual tie for second.

Still, in spite of this surge in popularity, Huckabee has almost no money
or organization. He has no national finance chairman, no speechwriters
and a policy staff of three. His ‘‘national field director’’ is
his 25-year-old
daughter, Sarah. Huckabee does have a pollster, Dick Dresner, but so far
there hasn’t been enough cash to take any polls. ‘‘I think
we can go until
the beginning of the year,’’ Dresner told me. ‘‘If
we start by then to raise
some money, we can begin to acquire the trappings of a campaign. Which,
at the moment, we don’t really have.’’

Scott Reed, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, doubts
that Huckabee will come up with the money. ‘‘He spends more time
in
cable TV studios than he does meeting with his finance committee,’’ he
says. ‘‘A big win in Iowa will get him enough to go on for a couple
weeks.
Then, if he comes in second or third in New Hampshire, he’s in the race.
Short of that, he’s a one-night stand.’’

Many Republican strategists remain dubious about Huckabee’s chances.
‘‘He’ll get hammered in New Hampshire,’’ the
Republican consultant Mike
Murphy told me. ‘‘A primary campaign is like a book. Iowa is just
the first chapter. After that come more chapters. Opponents will hit Huckabee
for
being soft on immigration, Arkansas allegations, that kind of thing. And
at some point, Republican elites will begin to ask, Is what we need a smallstate
governor who doesn’t believe in Darwin?’’

Huckabee himself speaks about a Nascar strategy, with his opponents
crashing into walls or one another and him, as the last man on wheels, winning
the race. Other candidates, especially Romney and Fred Thompson,
have already begun bumping up against him, and of course, he bumps back.
And Rudy Giuliani, the putative winner of a Romney flameout in Iowa, is
starting to look for Huckabee in his Florida rearview mirror.

Huckabee may lose the race, but he has already scrambled it. The
Republican presidential contest was expected to focus on foreign policy,
national security and executive competence. Huckabee has moved it to
issues of character, religion and personality. Regardless of what happens,
he is now a real player in the Republican Party, a man to be taken seriously.

It
has been a startlingly quick transformation. Six weeks ago, I met
Huckabee
for lunch at an Olive Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. (I had
offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed his first choice,
T.G.I. Friday’s.) He walked through the room in such total anonymity
that
I felt sorry for him. Our waiter, Corey, had no idea who he was, or even
that he was supposed to be somebody.

Photo

Meeting supporters at a community college near Des Moines.Credit
Mark Peterson for The New York Times

Lunch with Mike Huckabee is a study in faith-based dieting. He has
lost 110 pounds in recent years, a feat he chronicled in a book, ‘‘Quit
Digging
Your Grave With a Knife and Fork.’’ This has given Huckabee something
to talk about on daytime television. More important, it has lent him
evangelical street cred. An important part of the evangelical narrative is
overcoming the devil. But Huckabee was seemingly born born-again.
Luckily for him, gluttony counts as a sin, Crisco as a Christian chemical
dependency. By the time he reached 40, Huckabee had packed more than
300 pounds onto his 5-foot-11 frame. Then he began wrestling, calorie
by calorie, with Satan.

Huckabee ordered soup and a sandwich without drama or comment and
began talking about rock ’n’ roll. This is his regular warm-up
gambit with
reporters of a certain age, meant to convey that he is a cool guy for a Baptist
preacher. Naturally I fell for it, and asked who he would like to play at his
inaugural. ‘‘I’ve got to start with the Stones,’’ Huckabee
said. The governor
regards 1968 as the dawning of ‘‘the age of the birth-control pill,
free love,
gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.’’ The
Rolling
Stones album ‘‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’’ provided
the soundtrack
for that annus terribilis. But Mike Huckabee wanted me to know that he
believes in the separation of church and stage.

The governor’s musical wish list also included John Mellencamp, who,
he
noted, would be welcome despite their differing political views; the country
duo Brooks & Dunn; Stevie Wonder; and, surprisingly, Grand Funk
Railroad. ‘‘That’s a groundbreaking group,’’ he
said earnestly. ‘‘The bass
player, Mel Schacher, is very underrated. ’’ Our food arrived and
Huckabee
poked at his croutons while gamely turning the conversation to issues. He
mentioned three: tax cuts, financing for arts education and energy independence.‘‘We
have to get to the point where we need the Saudis’ oil
about
as much as we need their sand,’’ he said. It was a standard line,
delivered
without any particular passion.

The price of oil took us to foreign affairs, which Huckabee knows is
not his strong suit. He quoted Pat Buchanan’s crack from the 1992 presidential
campaign that Bill Clinton’s foreign-policy experience came
from eating at the International House of Pancakes. But Clinton circa
1992 — who had worked briefly for Senator William Fulbright and studied
the ways of the world at Georgetown, Yale and Oxford — was Prince
Metternich compared with Huckabee.

In his defense, Huckabee mentioned that as governor, he had visited ‘‘35
or 40 countries,’’ where he sometimes
negotiated trade deals. ‘‘In some
ways, this kind of experience is more
significant than that of senators who sit
on some committee,’’ he said gamely. He
also noted that George W. Bush came to
office as a Southern governor without
foreign-policy experience.

But things have changed since then.
Huckabee says he believes that the next
president of the United States will have to
lead Western civilization in a worldwide
conflict with radical Islam. For a man
with that kind of ambition, he has not
been particularly well briefed. On Dec.
4, for instance, he was asked about the
National Intelligence Estimate released
the day before, which found that Iran had
suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Huckabee said that he
hadn’t seen it, though it had been the top news story in the country,
maybe the world, for the previous 24 hours.

At lunch, when I asked him who influences his thinking on foreign
affairs, he mentioned Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist,
and Frank Gaffney, a neoconservative and the founder of a research group
called the Center for Security Policy. This is like taking travel advice from
Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, but the governor seemed unaware of
the incongruity. When I pressed him, he mentioned he had once ‘‘visited’’
with Richard Haass, the middle-of-the-road president of the Council on
Foreign Relations. Huckabee has no military experience beyond commanding
the Arkansas National Guard, but he doesn’t see this as an insuperable
problem. ‘‘What you do,’’ he explained, ‘‘is
surround yourself with the best
possible advice.’’ The only name he mentioned was Representative
Duncan
Hunter of California. ‘‘Duncan is extraordinarily well qualified
to be secretary
of Defense,’’ he said.

‘‘If you aren’t for some reason elected president, what cabinet
position
would you be suited for?’’ I asked. Huckabee paused, considering. ‘‘Secretary
of health and human services would be one,’’ he said. ‘‘Secretary
of
transportation, or the interior.’’ Perhaps aware that this wasn’t
a Mount
Rushmore self-evaluation, he quickly added that he doesn’t really want
a
cabinet position or any other government job. ‘‘I’d be just
as happy to go
back to Arkansas and open a bait shop on a lake,’’ he said. Huckabee
was
eager to separate himself from George W. Bush, who, he complained, often
visited Arkansas without bothering to notify the governor’s office. ‘‘Clinton
was much better at letting us know his plans and including us in his
activities. He was always gracious and respectful.’’ In September,
Clinton
told George Stephanopoulos of ABC that Huckabee was the only Republican
‘‘dark horse that’s got any kind of chance.’’

Clinton’s goodwill stems, Huckabee believes, from Huckabee’s own
restraint during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. ‘‘Obviously I was asked
to
comment. If I had been willing to criticize President Clinton, I could have
made a cottage industry out of it. But I didn’t do that, I didn’t
discuss it at
all. And I think he was grateful for that.’’

Hillary Clinton had recently announced that, if elected president, she
would use her husband as a ‘‘roving ambassador.’’ I asked
Huckabee if he
envisioned a similar role for George W. Bush. ‘‘I think he just wants
to go
back to Texas,’’ Huckabee said. ‘‘I’ve heard
him say that.’’

‘‘But if he wanted be involved?’’ I asked. Huckabee paused,
picking a
crouton out of his salad. ‘‘Well, if the matter ever came up, I wouldn’t
entirely dismiss it,’’ he said finally.

Right about then Corey, our waiter, came over with the check. I introduced
him to the candidate. ‘‘I thought you looked familiar,’’ he
said diplomatically. ‘‘What are you for?’’ Huckabee gave
him a friendly,
quizzical look.

‘‘Oh,’’ the governor said. ‘‘Ah, tax cuts.
Support for arts education.
And energy independence. I want to get where we need the Saudis’ oil
about as much as we need their sand.’’

Corey mentioned that he, personally, would like to see waiters’ tips
rise to 18 percent. Huckabee laughed agreeably but said nothing. No Republican
candidate
wants to get caught by a reporter advocating a price hike for anything.

Nowadays Huckabee has more policy positions, but his campaign
is really all
about his Christian character. His slogan is ‘‘Faith, Family, Freedom,’’ which
Huckabee, who was once a public-relations man for the Texas televangelist
James Robison, wrote himself. Huckabee is no theocrat. He simply believes
in the power of the Christian message, and in his ability to embody and deliver
it. ‘‘It’s not that we want to impose our religion on somebody,’’ he
wrote in
‘‘Character Makes a Difference,’’ a book first published
in 1997 (as ‘‘Character
Is the Issue’’) and reissued earlier this year. ‘‘It’s
that we want to shape the
culture and laws by using a worldview we believe has value.’’

During his years in politics, Huckabee has become a master at disarming
secular audiences. Throughout the campaign he has impressed the
national press corps with his ability to dodge questions aimed at portraying
him as a fundamentalist. Asked in a CNN debate, for example, what Jesus would
do about capital punishment, Huckabee responded that Jesus
was too smart to run for public office. On another occasion, queried if
only Baptists go to heaven, he remarked that not even all the Baptists he
knows will get past the pearly gates. Such jokes are designed to give outsiders
the impression that Huckabee couldn’t be all that religious. But
they are really just witty formulations of standard evangelical doctrine,
things not even the most ardent country Baptist preacher could disagree with.

The Rev. Wallace Edgar is such a preacher. He has known Mike Huckabee for
more than 20 years, since they led Baptist churches near each
other in Texarkana. Wallace is a big Huckabee fan. ‘‘Mike was very
conservative
with the Scriptures, he didn’t deviate from the Word,’’ he
told
me. Some born-again Christians don’t like Huckabee’s light touch,
or
the fact that he has involved himself in secular politics at all. A few even
accuse him of neglecting the obligation to engage in personal evangelism.
Huckabee addressed this issue in September, in an interview with The
Baptist Press. ‘‘In fact, I think I’ve had far more opportunities
because
of my position as a governor and now as a candidate for president to
share my faith,’’ he told Will Hall, a reporter for the paper. ‘‘Nobody’s
paying me; nobody’s forcing me to talk about what Christ means to me,
and when I’m able to share it, I think it has a, you know, a very dramatic
and powerful impact, and they know it’s what really drives me and
explains me, if you will.’’

Photo

Mike Huckabee in a ballroom of the Crowne Plaza Five Seasons Hotel in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.Credit
Michele Asselin for The New York Times

In late November, Huckabee began running a short television ad called
‘‘Believe.’’ It starts with the candidate declaring, ‘‘Faith
doesn’t just
influence me, it really defines me.’’ As he speaks, the words ‘‘Christian
Leader’’ flash across the screen. This ad was, of course, directed
at the
evangelical voters of Iowa. But it has also caught the attention of big-time
figures in evangelical Christianity, many of whom have refrained from
supporting Huckabee’s candidacy. This failure has puzzled and angered
the governor. At the Olive Garden he spoke with bitterness about Richard
Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
of the Southern Baptist Convention. ‘‘Richard Land swoons for Fred
Thompson,’’ he said. ‘‘I don’t know what that’s
about. For reasons I
don’t fully understand, some of these Washington-based people forget
why they are there. They make ‘electability’ their criterion. But
I am a
true soldier for the cause. If my own abandon me on the battlefield, it
will have a chilling effect.’’

The following week, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, Huckabee
won the roomful of grass-roots evangelicals but failed to gain any significant
endorsements from evangelical leaders. ‘‘The evangelical leadership
didn’t, and perhaps still doesn’t, perceive Governor Huckabee as
a winner,’’
Charles Dunn, dean of the school of government at Regent University, told
me. ‘‘But more and more, it appears that the leadership is not
in touch with
its followers.’’

This indictment extends to the founder of Dunn’s own university, Pat
Robertson, who has endorsed Rudy Giuliani. It applies equally to the
National Right to Life Committee, which is with Fred Thompson; and
to the Rev. Bob Jones III, Jay Sekulow, head of the American Center
for Law and Justice (the evangelical counterpart of the A.C.L.U.), and
Paul Weyrich, the conservative activist who helped build the evangelical
movement, all of whom are supporting Mitt Romney. James Dobson,
the founder of Focus on the Family, is still on the fence. ‘‘I
just don’t
understand his neutrality,’’ Huckabee told me one day at the end
of
October in Des Moines. ‘‘I’d be an obvious choice for his
endorsement.
We’re old friends. I love him and I love his wife, Shirley. I just don’t
know how to explain it.’’

Dunn offers a possible explanation for the resistance from born-again
leaders. ‘‘Mike Huckabee isn’t just another politician,’’ he
told me. ‘‘He is
an evangelical minister. If he does well in Iowa, as he appears to be doing,
he will become a national figure no matter what happens after that. He
could wind up eclipsing all the other evangelical leaders in this country in
one fell swoop. And you know what it says in the Book of Proverbs. ‘Envy
is the rottenness of the bones.’ ’’

Dunn says he believes that Huckabee is actually lucky to have avoided a
lot of marquee evangelical endorsements. ‘‘Some of these people
come with
a lot of baggage,’’ he told me. ‘‘Cultivate them on
their terms and you can
wind up selling your soul. If Huckabee wins in Iowa and keeps on going,
they’ll have no choice but to seek him out on his terms.’’

In fact, that already seems to be happening. On the day Tim LaHaye
endorsed Huckabee, the governor also won the support of Concerned
Women of America (led by LaHaye’s wife, Beverly), 57 Iowa pastors and
Chuck Hurley, the president of the Iowa Family Policy Center. On the
ride to Central College, I mentioned Dunn’s speculation to Huckabee.
The candidate was noncommittal but not dismissive. ‘‘I’ve
never thought
of it,’’ he said.

Possibly he hadn’t. But if Mike Huckabee, who has no profession except
the ministry and no personal fortune, doesn’t wind up on the government
payroll next year, he will need a new job. He might just decide he’d
like to
be the next Billy Graham or Jerry Falwell, a national evangelical leader who
saves souls for Christ as he counsels presidents and brokers political power.

Mike Huckabee was, by now famously, born and raised in
Hope, Ark. His
father was a fireman who didn’t finish high school. His mother was, as
he
likes to boast, one generation removed from dirt floors and outhouses. He
attended the same kindergarten — Miss Marie Purkins’ School for
Little
Folks — as Bill Clinton, who is nine years his senior. But Clinton left
Hope
when he was 7. Huckabee stayed.

‘‘I was a timid little guy when I was a kid,’’ he recalls. ‘‘I
used humor as a
defense; I became the class clown. But deep inside I felt real vulnerable.’’ In
the supremely macho culture of small-town Arkansas, he stood out as a klutz.
One of Huckabee’s lasting childhood memories is how, in seventh grade,
the
gym teacher put him on a team of the worst basketball players and made him
perform for the amusement of the entire class. ‘‘It was just to
get others to
laugh at us,’’ he says. ‘‘I remember how humiliated
I felt, being singled out.’’

Words and music were Huckabee’s salvation. He started playing rock-
’n’-roll guitar at 11. He became a champion public speaker and
debater.
At 14 he was hired as an announcer for the local radio station. Huckabee
grew up on stages and in studios.

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And in a missionary Baptist church. His father brought him up with biblical
spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child ferocity. ‘‘I feared him,’’ Huckabee
told
me. ‘‘Even though I know today that what he did, he did out of
intense love.’’

The harsh moral instruction took. If young Mike Huckabee was ever
rebellious or difficult, there’s no record of it. He preached his first
sermon
as a teenager, married his high-school sweetheart and went off to Ouachita
Baptist University in Arkadelphia. There he majored in religion, worked at a radio station and earned his B.A. in a little
more than two years. He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., before dropping out to work for the televangelist
James Robison, who bought him his first decent wardrobe and
showed him how to use television. To this day, Huckabee regards Robison
as one of his role models in the art of communication, along with Ronald
Reagan and the radio commentator Paul Harvey.

In 1979, after four years of doing what Janet Huckabee wryly refers to as
‘‘missionary work in Texas,’’ Huckabee returned to Arkansas
to serve as a congregational pastor and, eventually, head of the 490,000-member
Baptist State Convention. From this power base, he ran for the Senate against
the incumbent Dale Bumpers in 1992 and lost resoundingly. During that campaign,
he advocated separating people with H.I.V./AIDS from the general population,
telling the Associated Press that ‘‘we need to take steps that would isolate
the carriers of this plague.’’ Questioned about this statement recently on ‘‘Fox
News Sunday,’’ Huckabee said: ‘‘I don't run from it. I don't recant.’’ He also
said that he still believes that ‘‘we were acting more out of political correctness’’
in responding to the AIDS crisis. In 1993, Huckabee won a special election for
lieutenant governor. Then, in 1996, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker was convicted on federal
charges of fraud and conspiracy in events relating to the Whitewater scandal.

What happened next is related in the first 31 pages of ‘‘Character
Makes
a Difference.’’ This is Huckabee’s ‘‘Profiles
in Courage’’ (if J.F.K. had been
writing autobiography). He gives the book to reporters as a testament to
his skill at crisis management. The crisis in question took place on July 15,
1996. Governor Tucker was supposed to resign, and Huckabee was scheduled
to be sworn in at 2 p.m. But at 1:55, Tucker called to say that he had
changed his mind. He wasn’t quitting.

This was ‘‘arguably the greatest constitutional crisis in Arkansas
history,’’
Huckabee writes, as though his state never seceded from the Union or had its
capital’s high school forcibly integrated by the 101st Airborne. Still,
Tucker’s
change of heart was a big moment. As Huckabee recalls it, the Arkansas State
Legislature fell into chaos. ‘‘Many of the old-time Democrats all
but fell on
the floor and ripped their garments in twain. . . . Keeping your word is a
sacred
thing in Arkansas.’’ When it became clear that garment-rending
wouldn’t get
Tucker to go away quietly, Huckabee took direct action. He addressed the
people in a statewide telecast, informing them that he was now in control;
he threatened impeachment proceedings against Tucker; state troopers were
mobilized to protect the capital. All this activity had the desired effect.
Tucker
re-resigned. In fact, the whole affair was wrapped up by the 6 o’clock
news.

Huckabee went on to serve out Tucker’s term and two of his own. He was,
by
most reckonings, a successful governor. He built roads, improved the schools,
gave fine speeches and comported himself with affability. Folks generally liked
Mike. Which is why many were surprised when, at the end of October, the
University of Arkansas published a poll in which state voters, asked an open
question about their presidential preference, chose Hillary Clinton. She got
35
percent. Huckabee, less than a year out of the governor’s mansion, tied
Rudy
Giuliani for second place with 8 percent.

John Brummett, the political columnist for The Arkansas News Bureau
in Little Rock, interprets the University of Arkansas poll as referendum
on Huckabee’s perceived lack of gravitas. ‘‘He did a lot
of good things,’’
Brummett told me. ‘‘But a lot of people down here see him as a
pale imitation
of Bill Clinton. People doubt that he’s really presidential-caliber.’’

Photo

The Front-Runner (for the Moment at Least) Mike Huckabee addressing reporters in Newton, Iowa. Short on money and volunteers, Huckabee finds himself in an unusual spot: Ahead in the polls. But he is facing a very long race. Credit
Mark Peterson for The New York Times

Brummett had his share of run-ins with Huckabee, whom he sometimes
called His Huffiness. But he has a soft spot for the governor. ‘‘A
while back my dog died,’’ he told me. ‘‘When I wrote
a column about
it, Governor Huckabee got in touch with me. He’s got a Labrador, like
mine, named Jet. He offered me a puppy from the next litter. I had
no doubt that it was a sincere gesture. He’s the kind of man whose heart
can be touched by a pet.’’ Huckabee’s
compassion made him popular with
poor and minority voters. ‘‘Republicans
usually get about 5 or 10 percent of the
black vote in Arkansas,’’ Brummett told
me, ‘‘but there’s evidence, from precinct
reports, that Huckabee got 30 percent,
maybe more.’’ Fiscal conservatives accuse
Huckabee of being too compassionate, a
traditional open-handed Southern politician.

The charge against him has been
led by the Club for Growth, a group that
promotes tax cuts and limiting government
spending, which Huckabee refers
to as the Club for Greed. According to
Nachama Soloveichik, a spokeswoman
for the Club for Growth, the governor is
‘‘a serial tax hiker and a big-government
big spender.’’ The columnist George Will
has acidly mocked Huckabee’s ‘‘incoherent populism,’’ saying
that his
candidacy ‘‘rests on serial non sequiturs: I am a Christian, therefore
I
am a conservative, therefore whatever I have done or propose to do with
‘compassionate,’ meaning enlarged, government is conservatism.’’

There is some truth to the big-government, big-spender characterization,
but it is also an exaggeration. As governor, Huckabee raised some taxes and
lowered others and left office with a state surplus of more than $800 million.
Huckabee’s answer to his opponents on the fiscal right has been his Fair
Tax
proposal. The idea calls for abolishing the I.R.S. and all current federal taxes,
including Social Security, Medicare and corporate and personal income taxes,
and replacing them with an across-the-board 23 percent consumption tax.

Governor Huckabee promises that this plan would be ‘‘like waving
a magic
wand, releasing us from pain and unfairness.’’ Some reputable economists
think the scheme is practicable. Many others regard it as fanciful. (For starters,
it would require repealing the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.) In
any case, the Fair Tax proposal is based on extremely complex projections.

Huckabee does not have an impressive grasp of its details. When I suggested,
for example, that consumers might evade the tax simply by acquiring goods
and services for cash on the black market, he seemed genuinely surprised.
Immigration has also been a tough issue for Huckabee among potential
Republican voters. Critics accuse him of being soft for allowing the children
of illegals, educated in Arkansas, to apply for public scholarship money.

According to Paul Greenberg, the editorial page editor of The Arkansas
Democrat-Gazette, this approach is a function of Huckabee’s Christian
charity. ‘‘He sees them as ‘strangers in a strange land.’ ’’ Despite
political
pressure, Huckabee hasn’t backed down from his belief that it is wrong
to
punish immigrant children for the sins of their parents. On the other hand,
there’s nothing in the Bible about giving strangers driver’s licenses,
a policy
Huckabee has long opposed.

As a premillennialist evangelical, Huckabee also has no problem with
enforcing the law, at the border or anywhere else. ‘‘A person with
a biblical
worldview of human nature says humans are by nature selfish,’’ he
has
written. ‘‘We are not basically good; rather, we are basically self-centered.
. . .
Only two things will change this behavior: either our nature will be changed
by a supernatural experience with God through Christ, or we will fear the
consequences of not doing the right thing.’’

Huckabee would prefer, of course, that people go the supernatural route,
but he is also a law-and-order man. Like his father before him, he (and his
wife) administered corporal punishment to their three children.

Huckabee has been criticized by rival candidates for his role in the Wayne
DuMond case, in which an incarcerated rapist was paroled from prison in
Arkansas and subsequently
killed a woman in Missouri.
Governor Huckabee favored
the parole. But attacking
him as soft on crime won’t
be so easy for his opponents.
Writing about capital punishment,
Huckabee said, ‘‘I
took my action with a sense
of resolve, and to this day I
am confident that I did the
right thing — ‘right’ defined
against moral absolutes in the
midst of an imperfect world.’’
In fact, Huckabee is the only
man in the race who has actually
signed another human
being’s death warrant.

If there are flaws in Huckabee’s
personal reputation,
they center on the perception
that he has a preacher’s
sense of entitlement. In blunt
terms, he took a lot of gifts.
In 1999, the first year as governor
that he was required
by law to record their value,
he listed 73 presents, including
a pair of season football
tickets from the University
of Arkansas, a guitar from
the band Lynyrd Skynyrd,
fishing and hunting trips, a
carved sculpture of Christ, a
leather purse for his wife from
Jennifer’s Dress Shop, a case
of beef, department-store gift
certificates and the use of a
Chevrolet. He was also given
honorary membership to
Chenal Valley Country Club,
the Little Rock Club, Pleasant
Valley Country Club,
the Country Club of Little
Rock, Maumelle Bass Club
and the Old Fishing Club.
Huckabee received ‘‘legal
services’’ from a Fayetteville
attorney, Tom Mars, whom
he later appointed director
of the Arkansas State Police.
Mars defended Huckabee in
a suit charging that he had
improperly claimed $70,000
worth of furniture, intended
for the governor’s mansion,
as a personal gift. (Huckabee
eventually conceded the
point, but the charge was
later dropped.)

As lieutenant governor, Huckabee established a corporation,
Action America,
to which people donated
more than $60,000. He used
that money to pay himself
for delivering inspirational
speeches. Asked by the
Arkansas news media to disclose
the names of donors,
Huckabee declined. In all,
Huckabee accepted and
reported upward of 300 gifts
during his years in office,
worth at least $150,000 and
probably much more. Some
were received at a gift shower
that was held for the benefit
of the family.

‘‘The women who threw
that shower were old friends
of my wife’s,’’ he told me at
the Olive Garden. ‘‘Local
journalists tried to make it
look like we were gouging
presents. I have no problem
with honest criticism, but
that was just pettiness.’’

In his home state, Huckabee
has a reputation for an
elephantine memory for
slights and criticism. ‘‘The
local cliché about him is that
he is thin-skinned,’’ says Prof.
Janine Parry, who teaches
Arkansas state politics at
the University of Arkansas.
‘‘And he can be mean. The
national press hasn’t seen
much of that. So far he’s kept
it under control.’’

Huckabee, on one wellremembered
occasion,
banned an alternative newspaper,
The Arkansas Times,
from the services of the governor’s
press office. His usual
weapon, though, has been his
sharp tongue. Huckabee is
never profane — one of his
first acts as governor was to
ban swearing and inappropriate
sexual remarks by his
staff — but he has a way of
expressing himself that
sometimes flirts with vulgarity.
‘‘Once he told a group of
journalists that I was constipated,’’
John Brummett
recalls. ‘‘That was his way of
saying I was full of [expletive].’’

This fall, Huckabee demonstrated
his style in an
interview with The Washington
Times. Assailing
Hillary Clinton for failing to denounce MoveOn.org’s
attack on Gen. David Petraeus,
he said, ‘‘If you can’t get
your lips off the backside of
George Soros long enough
to use those lips to say it’s
wrong to declare a sitting
general . . . guilty of treason,
how would you ever expect
to have the support of the
very military you might have
to send into deadly battle?’’

Huckabee often describes
unpleasant tasks as ‘‘about as
much fun as a colonoscopy.’’
He once told a reporter from
The Washington Post that his
rock band doesn’t get women
tossing their panties on the
stage because ‘‘given our
demographics, we’re more
likely to have old men throwing
their Depends at us.’’

Self-deprecating humor
is another Huckabee trademark,
but the barbs have
a way of winding up in
someone else’s hide. On
the stump, he gets a laugh
telling audiences that the
five words Arkansas politicians
fear most are ‘‘Will the
defendant please rise.’’ But
it wasn’t Huckabee who got
into trouble with the law;
it was his predecessors. In
2000, on the Don Imus radio
program, Huckabee called
his state ‘‘a banana republic.’’
Some Arkansans thought it
was funny. Others considered
it an effort to ingratiate
himself with a national media
figure by laughing at them.

Photo

Huckabee, Before and After: Fishing on the Arkansas River in 2001 (top) and four years and 110 pounds later. Credit
From Mike Huckabee

And yet, despite what she
sees as Huckabee’s mean
streak, Professor Parry of
Arkansas, who is a selfdescribed
liberal, considers
Huckabee a good governor.
‘‘When he first came to
office, people like me were
worried about the religious
aspect,’’ she says. ‘‘And he is
very orthodox on gays, guns
and God. But he knows
there’s more than just these
issues.’’

The Surf Ballroom in Clear
Lake, Iowa, is a rock-’n’-roll
shrine, the last venue played
by Buddy Holly, Ritchie
Valens and the Big Bopper
before their plane went down in February 1959. When I
pulled up there, on the last Friday in
October, the old-fashioned marquee
read, ‘‘Mike Huckabee and Capitol
Offense,’’ and beneath that, in
equally large letters, ‘‘The Thunder
from Down Under.’’ Hillary or Mitt
would never have agreed to share a
marquee with an all-male adult cabaret.
They also wouldn’t have introduced
a new phase of their campaign
at the site of one of the most famous
crashes in American history. Luckily,
Huckabee didn’t have enough
staff for conventional planning. The
show that night had a $10 entry fee,
$25 for families. I sat at a round table
near the dance floor next to a man
with a crew cut and a booming voice
who matriculated at Regent University
and whose daughter was a student
at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
The crowd was white and in
the throes of advanced middle age.

The band was tight that night, but
the show started slowly. Only a few
couples took the floor. A man who
looked like Dick Cheney did a sedate
version of the Chicken with his wife,
who also looked like Dick Cheney.
‘‘Get out there and dance,’’ Huckabee
exhorted the crowd. ‘‘Let’s show
the world that conservative Republicans
can have as much fun as anybody.’’
Huckabee, I later learned,
doesn’t dance himself, or even move
around onstage. He must be one of
the few guys of his generation who
didn’t join a band to meet girls.

The candidate was in high spirits.
The campaign, he announced,
had taken in more money in the
last week than in the previous few
months. He was presented with a
fishing rod as a gift, and he observed
that he believed a man should go to
church once a week and fishing once
a week. Several times he declared the
Surf to be ‘‘sacred ground.’’

If there was magic there, it was
working. Three days later, the Hawkeye
Poll of the University of Iowa was
published. Huckabee had 13 percent,
in a virtual tie with Rudy Giuliani for
second place, behind Mitt Romney
with 36. At that point, the Huckabee
bandwagon didn’t seem all that
amazing to Iowa veterans. ‘‘Actually,
it is pretty straightforward,’’
said Prof. David Redlawsk, director
of the University of Iowa’s Hawkeye
Poll. ‘‘About 45 percent of the 85,000
or so Republican caucus voters are evangelical Christians. Roughly half
of them automatically vote for the
most socially conservative candidate
in the race, and it looks like they have
decided that’s Huckabee. The other
half can be won over, too — if they
think he’s electable.’’

Three weeks later, Redlawsk
revised his estimate. He thought
Huckabee might actually win. He
even wondered if Huckabee might
be peaking too soon. The Iowa caucus
doesn’t really decide anything,
not even convention delegates. It’s
a media event, a momentum-builder
for the candidate who is judged to
exceed expectations. ‘‘If he continues
to lead in the polls until Jan. 3,
he could find himself in the position
that a narrow win is interpreted as a
loss,’’ Redlawsk cautioned.

Money remains a problem. At
the start of November, Huckabee
set an online fund-raising goal of
$2,067,521, and he barely made it,
despite all the buzz around his candidacy.
Compare him with Ron Paul,
who raised more than $4 million on
the Internet in one day in October,
while still lingering in the single digits
in both national and early primary
state polls.

‘‘Huckabee’s voters are people
who tithe,’’ a professor at Liberty
University told me. ‘‘People who
give 10 percent of their income to
the church don’t usually have money
left over for political donations.’’

Huckabee, who tithes himself,
agrees. There is big evangelical money
out there, of course, but so far he
hasn’t been on the receiving end of it.
In the first three-quarters of this year,
his campaign’s largest individual bundler
was Stephens Inc., a Little Rock
investment-banking firm that anted
up about $35,000. Oddly, one member
of the Stephens family, Jackson
T. (Steve) Stephens Jr., has donated
more than $1 million to the Club for
Growth and is on its board of directors.
The governor declined to discuss
the matter, the only time in our
dealings when I got a ‘‘no comment.’’

Huckabee, like the other candidates,
has yet to report his campaign’s
gross income from the last quarter of
2007, but judging from his Iowa operation,
it couldn’t be much. On the
first Sunday afternoon in December,
the very day that Huckabee took the
lead in the Register poll, I stopped
by his Des Moines headquarters.
The place is about the size of Floyd’s
Mayberry barbershop and not as
busy. Janet Huckabee was there, decking the walls for Christmas. A few young
staff
members and volunteers sat at phones that didn’t
ring. I came in with Steve Penland, a burly man
in a Marines baseball cap who wanted to know if
Huckabee was planning to repeal Nafta. This is a
big deal in Iowa, but no one in the office, including
the resident ‘‘issues’’ man, had any idea where the
candidate stood. (I asked Huckabee the next day;
he’s for keeping it.) Penland walked away from the
exchange a dissatisfied customer, although he did
get a holiday mint from Janet Huckabee.

As Mike Huckabee was being interviewed by
Harry Smith of ‘‘The Early Show’’ at Central College,
a few blocks away, in downtown Pella, the
P arliament of Dutch Iowa was convening. Pella
is a little town founded 160 years ago by immigrants
from the Netherlands, and they built their
American home in the image of the old country,
windmills, a canal and all. In’t Veld Meat Market,
known locally as the Baloney Shop, is a local institution
where the Parliament gathers. It is a daily
meeting of elders, who range in age from early
retirees to Tony Tysseling, who turns 100 next
June and drove himself to the meeting, as he does
every morning. The group has one conversational
rule: no politics and no religion. But they agreed to
make an exception for a stranger from New York.

The Parliament is not what you would call
polarized. Only one man (they were all men,
except for one woman who said that she was just
there keeping an eye on her husband) admitted
to being a Democrat. They razzed Tony Tysseling
for having once voted for F.D.R. ‘‘I voted for
Hoover the first time, though,’’ he said in selfdefense.
‘‘Hoover was an Iowa boy.’’ The others
nodded. Some of them voted for Wendell Willkie
or Tom Dewey or Ike. Others converted to the
Republican cause 20 years earlier, when Pat Robertson
ran in the caucus. Robertson got 25 percent
in 1988, roughly where Huckabee was now
showing in the polls.

‘‘I like the sound of Mike Huckabee,’’ one
man said. ‘‘I don’t know much about him, but he
seems like he’d fit in this community.’’

‘‘He’s not too far East,’’ said Leo Nikkel.

‘‘Jan. 3 is the Orange Bowl,’’ noted Eldon
Schulte, who played linebacker for the Chicago
Bears in the early ’60s. ‘‘Same day as the caucus.’’

‘‘Lot of people may not vote,’’ said a man at the
end of the table.

‘‘Lot will,’’ another said. It was as close as they
were going to get to an argument.

Finally I called the vote, reading out names as the
elders raised their hands shyly. One vote for Mitt
Romney. One for Rudy Giuliani. Nine for Mike
Huckabee, and the rest unwilling to express an
opinion. Casey Van Weelden summed up local sentiment:
‘‘Huckabee’s a moral man. He’s a preacher.
And he lost a hundred pounds. He’s going to do all
right in Iowa. What I don’t know is how he’s going
to go with the rest of the country.’’

Neither does Huckabee. His Nascar strategy is,
at best, a long shot. He doesn’t have many troops
in New Hampshire, or the money to campaign
simultaneously in more than 20 states for Super Tuesday. And there is always
the possibility that
the sometimes hypersensitive governor will crack
under the pounding of his primary opponents.
But even if his presidential prospects do dim,
Huckabee could be a natural for the No. 2 slot,
especially for Giuliani, who could use both an
evangelical and a Southerner on the ticket. And
Huckabee plays well with others. ‘‘If the candidates
held a greenroom Mr. Congeniality contest,
Huckabee would win in a walk,’’ an aide to
one of his opponents told me.

Of course, Huckabee swears he isn’t interested
in second place. Could he be tempted? As the
Republican consultant Mike Murphy says, ‘‘Vice
presidents become presidents.’’ Huckabee, who
inherited the governor’s office from his boss, is
well aware of this means of accession. Or he might
wait for another shot. ‘‘Mike’s only 52 years old,
much younger than the other candidates,’’ his
adviser Dick Dresner told me. ‘‘He can look past
this race to 2012 or beyond. With the national
exposure he’s getting this year, he could be a real
factor in the G.O.P. for a long time.’’

Correction: January 13, 2008

An article on Dec. 16 about Mike Huckabee misstated his academic credentials. He majored in religion at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., not speech and communications. Speech was his minor.